Jordan Mechner to update Apple II Prince of Persia code

A fortuitous find from the father of a classic game designer is leading to an update for modern systems. Jordan Mechner, the designer behind the original Prince of Persia, thought he had lost the Apple II source code for the 23-year-old game. But like most things you lose, it was just buried in a box at his parents' house.

Mechner blogged that his father found an old box in a closet while doing some spring cleaning, and opted to send it over. Among the finds were the 3.5" disks of the code, which he says he's been trying to find for ten years. "I knew it wasn't like me to throw stuff out!" he says.

So Mechner is setting out to transfer the data on those disks to a readable format for current Apple computers. He warns that "it might take a little while" since he's busy with other projects, but he'll document the progress on Twitter and Facebook. Most of us already have plenty of ways to play the classic Prince of Persia if we want to, but it makes for an interesting story about a lost artifact.